The Saint John police chief says he’s optimistic and very hopeful that their overtime dollar figures will be better this year than they were last year.
According to a report submitted to the Saint John Board of Police Commissioners overtime costs for the year-to-date are just over $100-thousand-dollars over budget though Chief John Bates points out that includes some numbers from last year that they ended up paying out this year — he does believe that number will plateau. The actual net overtime costs with the addition of $950 in revenue is $99,602 over budget.
In February the force went 213 hours and $15, 716 over its overtime budget though the chief says they undertook some additional training that month.
“We did rapid deployment training which is sort of that active shooter training if you will so we did that service-wide and did use of force training during the month of February,” says Bates. “It’s a good news story in that we won’t be doing that training later in the year when there’s even fewer people and probably have to backfill with more shifts.”
The overtime hours for the year-to-date is 948 over budget.
